Forget the dreary economy, the attendance struggles at the NASCAR Hall of Fame, crime concerns and prospects for reviving residential growth uptown.

Instead, Charlotte Center City Partners is wrapping up the final pieces of its plan for the next wave of major uptown initiatives, known as the Center City 2020 Vision Plan. Crafted over the past year at a cost of $750,000, the draft version of the plan is making its way through a city committee, headed to likely approval by City Council in September.

The plan envisions a thriving and expanding retail sector, a grand transportation hub, a new baseball stadium and an overhaul of the interstate beltway leading into parks and biking and jogging paths.

The wish list includes an amateur sports hub, an entertainment and retail corridor along Brevard Street, using the planned Gateway Station as a magnet for businesses and offices, creating jobs and a strong neighborhood along North Tryon Street in what’s billed as an innovation corridor and landing a major design school for South End.

Are we still in Charlotte? Fast-forward a decade or two, give the planners what they’re seeking, along with hundreds of millions of dollars in public and private investment, and the answer is yes.

The latest version of urban vision follows a tradition that began in 1966 with the Odell Center City Plan. It has been updated every decade or so since. The 2010 Plan, approved in 2000, provided a typical mix of hits and misses. Successes include the $265 million NBA arena opened in 2005, museums and cultural centers along Tryon Street completed in recent years, new restaurants and entertainment such as the EpiCentre complex and the revamped Little Sugar Creek Greenway. Other items included in the 2010 blueprint remain incomplete, stalled or unresolved, ranging from the long-debated minor-league ballpark to a Second Ward makeover with housing, shops, offices and a high school.

Next week, former Mayor Harvey Gantt, co-chair of the Center City 2020 Vision Plan, will present the draft version to City Council as part of a public hearing. In August, the council’s transportation and planning committee will vote on the draft before sending it to the full council for a final vote Sept. 12. If approved, the plan becomes the blueprint for the next decade of development and debate. The city, county and Charlotte Center City Partners shared the cost, with each committing $250,000.

Work on the 2020 Vision Plan began in fall 2009. Since then, thousands of people — including residents of the center city, nearby neighborhoods and suburbs — all offered suggestions, along with politicians, planners, business owners and advocates for various causes. “This is the people’s plan,” says Chris Beynon, MIG principal. “It’s taking the ideas of the community and applying our expertise.”

Such projects are familiar terrain for MIG, which has done similar work in Los Angeles and Dallas, among other cities. The 163-page plan could be tweaked in the weeks ahead, but Beynon expects no major additions or subtractions.

It calls for a slew of projects and goals, with 14 initiatives singled out for the most immediate chance for getting started. No cost estimates are included, though Beynon says suggested approaches, timelines and participants are part of the recommendations.

While the report focuses on the next decade, boosters urge caution when assessing what can and can’t be achieved between now and 2020. “This is more of a long-term vision,” says Cheryl Myers, senior vice president of Charlotte Center City Partners. “It’s how we position the center city and the role it plays.”

Myers points to some of the larger proposals as 20- and 30-year projects included because the groundwork needs to start now. See the entire document at centercity2020.info. A closer look at several of the more ambitious ideas is offered below.

Retail

Any discussion of what uptown lacks starts with shopping. Charlotte Center City Partners has led retail campaigns and studies in the past, and the latest plan calls for shopping clusters along Tryon, Trade, College and Brevard streets, as well as at The Green and in the Third Ward neighborhood surrounding the proposed baseball stadium.

“Charlotte is not unique in that it lost its retail downtown,” says Beynon, the lead consultant. “Downtowns nationwide are struggling with this.”

Uptown hopes rest, in part, on Daniel Levine’s multi-phase First Ward project. With the opening of a UNC Charlotte classroom building on Levine property this fall, boosters hope it will spur the developer to move on his plans for office, residential and retail at the 23-acre site.

The study suggests exploring micro-lending and other financing to help boutique retailers cope with higher center city rents. Another idea: prodding existing office buildings to revamp ground-floor lobbies with an emphasis on shops and restaurants.

At least one local expert says any meaningful chance at uptown retail passed the city by when it allowed a major expansion at SouthPark mall a decade ago.

“Other than calling for retail as if praying for rain, it ain’t coming,” says Michael Gallis, whose urban planning firm has studied retail, transportation and other issues across the country. “It’s silly and it’s stupid, and it’s an insulting waste of money.”

Referring to the SouthPark expansion, Gallis believes the city’s approval for suburban growth quashed nascent hopes for major retail anchors uptown. National developers such as Taubman considered the prospect in the late 1990s but ultimately backed away. For that reason, Gallis says, recent office and retail expansion has occurred between SouthPark and Ballantyne, not in the center city.

I-77 and I-277

Another refrain from the last center city plan, capping the Interstate 277 beltway, returns in the 2020 blueprint.

The idea is to smooth the transition between uptown and the South End, Wilmore and Dilworth neighborhoods. By adjusting a section of the beltway and adding natural areas, walking paths and connecting the areas, more people will go back and forth and more residential growth will occur.

The first step called for is a study of both I-77 and I-277, examining future transportation needs as well as related upgrades to improve aesthetics. The N.C. Department of Transportation and the city would collaborate on the suggested study, mapping out steps for future changes. Related ideas include recruiting developers for five city-owned parcels at Stonewall Street and I-277 near the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

Better pedestrian and bike paths, along with projects encompassing hotels, shops and offices, would be targeted under the 2020 Vision Plan. Revamping Stonewall and other streets to form attractive boulevards circling the city could also enhance the area, the study says. “One thing that has emerged is plans like this make us think about the center city in ways we hadn’t,” says David Howard, the Democratic city councilman who chairs the transportation and planning committee. “In addition to talking about capping the freeway, it also talks about dealing with the Brookshire side of 277 and making it more inviting.”

North Tryon

This stretch of the center city, extending northward toward UNC Charlotte, offers “a large amount of redevelopment potential,” the study says. Translation: It needs a lot of work.

Among the remedies in the plan: creating an organization to steer development and encourage businesses in technology and light-industrial sectors to consider the area. With help from the UNCC Research Institute, Center City Partners and city and county economic developers, North Tryon could put together programs and policies to spawn what’s billed as the Applied Innovation Corridor. What all those partnerships aim to do is convert eyesores into business areas with solid jobs to then help improve the nearby neighborhoods with better services, pedestrian access and so on.

Ballpark neighborhood/transit hubs

As much as uptown boosters still want a new home for the Charlotte Knights, they don’t want the site near the Carolina Panthers’ football stadium to become a sports ghetto.

Instead, they’re pushing for shops and restaurants, as well as residential development. Myers, the Center City Partners executive, says it’s crucial to make the area feel like a neighborhood and not just a place to see games.

Later this summer, the county is expected to approve a one-year extension to the Knights to start work on the oft-delayed stadium. Knights General Manager Dan Rajkowski wants to have the team in its new uptown home in time for the 2014 season but lacks a financing commitment for the $55 million stadium. Mecklenburg County is providing the 8-acre site, bounded by Graham, Mint and Fourth streets and Martin Luther King Boulevard.

If the stadium moves forward, the neighborhood would use it as a catalyst — and link it with the nearby planned Charlotte Gateway Station. Not to be confused with an expansion of the Charlotte Transportation Center on West Trade Street, the Gateway Station is targeted as a collaboration between the state and city, with hubs for relocated Amtrak and Greyhound stations, streetcar service and a 25-mile commuter line to Iredell County. Developers would be encouraged to push office development to the area, making for an easy commute for various workers and businesses.